I. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to communication, and more specifically to techniques for estimating interference in a wireless communication network.
II. Background
Wireless communication networks are widely deployed to provide various communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, etc. These wireless networks may be multiple-access networks capable of supporting multiple users by sharing the available network resources. Examples of such multiple-access networks include Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) networks, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) networks, Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) networks, Orthogonal FDMA (OFDMA) networks, and Single-Carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) networks.
A wireless communication network may include a number of base stations that can support communication for a number of user equipments (UEs). A UE may communicate with a base station via the downlink and uplink. The downlink (or forward link) refers to the communication link from the base station to the UE, and the uplink (or reverse link) refers to the communication link from the UE to the base station.
A UE may detect multiple cells in a wireless network, where a “cell” can refer to a base station subsystem or its coverage area, depending on the context in which the term is used. One cell may be selected to serve the UE and may be referred to as a serving cell. Alternatively, in a cooperative multipoint (CoMP) system, a cluster of cells may be selected to serve the UE and may be referred to as a serving cluster. The UE may observe interference from other cells (e.g., cells not in its serving cluster), and the interference may impact data transmission from the serving cell or cluster to the UE. It may be desirable to be able to accurately estimate interference from the other cells in order to improve performance of data transmission from the serving cell or cluster.